And for those who've made their money to fine tune their escape plans and make a last buck on the crazies.

Indeed, the Russians will have to make do with selling oil. They do a fair amount of that too, but the gas business is severely deflated. Even the coal power industry suffers when natgas is cheap, and for the moment it's a boon as nations briefly switch off or away from nuclear power for some post-Fukushima breathing room. Without cheap gas, the German plan to back away from nukes would falter, the same is true for Japan.

The high price of shale extraction means Russian oil, if pegged to the same value as a barrel of shale, means more profit per barrel on the world market. Or if separate, then it's much cheaper than the barrel of shale, which guarantees captive European/East-Asian business.

Indeed, the Russians will have to make do with selling oil. They do a fair amount of that too, but the gas business is severely deflated. Even the coal power industry suffers when natgas is cheap, and for the moment it's a boon as nations briefly switch off or away from nuclear power for some post-Fukushima breathing room. Without cheap gas, the German plan to back away from nukes would falter, the same is true for Japan.

The problem is that the Germans are not building the gas fired power plants they need, or the distribution capacity to utilize their wind and solar capacity. The Japanese are doing better, but lost so much of their distribution network from the 2011 T&&33;hoku earthquake and tsunami that they are highly limited as to how fast they can go.

The high price of shale extraction means Russian oil, if pegged to the same value as a barrel of shale, means more profit per barrel on the world market. Or if separate, then it's much cheaper than the barrel of shale, which guarantees captive European/East-Asian business.

Shale oil and regular oil are pegged to equivalent prices based on their properties, and trade against each other. And Russia does reap a higher profit when the oil price goes higher. However, the increased in the price of oil is not due to the cost of fracked oil, but to increased demand from India and China coupled with the depletion of older and cheaper oil fields that was replaced by newer more expensive oil production. This price increase is what has made fracking economical, and the rapid development of the fracked oil in turn has driven the price of oil down from its peak, reducing the Russian profits and producing a major hole in their budget that was based on the assumption that oil prices would remain high.